{"product_id":"count-me-in-isbn-9780525517245","title":"Count Me In","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn uplifting story, told through the alternating voices of two middle-schoolers, in which a community rallies to reject racism.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKarina Chopra would have never imagined becoming friends with the boy next door--after all, they've avoided each other for years and she assumes Chris is just like the boys he hangs out with, who she labels a pack of hyenas. Then Karina's grandfather starts tutoring Chris, and she discovers he's actually a nice, funny kid. But one afternoon something unimaginable happens--the three of them are assaulted by a stranger who targets Indian-American Karina and her grandfather because of how they look. Her grandfather is gravely injured and Karina and Chris vow not to let hate win. When Karina posts a few photos related to the attack on social media, they quickly attract attention, and before long her #CountMeIn post--\"What does an American look like? #immigrants #WeBelong #IamAmerican #HateHasNoHomeHere\"--goes viral and a diverse population begin to add their own photos. Then, when Papa is finally on the road to recovery, Karina uses her newfound social media reach to help celebrate both his homecoming and a community coming together.“\u003ci\u003eCount Me In \u003c\/i\u003eis a gem of a book both funny and heartbreaking in equal measure. With its deeply moving portrayal of the healing power of empathy, this is an important and necessary story.”—\u003cb\u003eAisha Saeed, author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestseller \u003ci\u003eAmal Unbound\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this heartfelt novel started a movement of its own! Readers will want to stand up and cheer for Karina and Chris and Papa, and shout to every corner of the world, ‘COUNT ME IN!’”—\u003cb\u003eKathi Appelt, author of the Newbery Honor winner \u003ci\u003eThe Underneath\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Compassionate, relatable characters. The story celebrates resilience, the power of community, and even the benefits of social media during a time when hate crimes against the Indian Diaspora are on the rise. The alternating chapters between Karina and Chris show that Americans come in all colors. Karina's message, that we are stronger together, will easily resonate with readers.”—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Karina and Chris draw on their friendship, their families, and the unexpectedly unifying power of social media for strength against fear and hatred. Fast-paced first-person narration alternates between Karina and Chris. This accessible read tackles weighty issues like racism and hatred, while the warmth of the growing friendship among Karina, Chris, and Papa carries readers through the book’s stressful conflicts to its satisfying conclusion. A solid recommendation for fans of books like Hena Khan’s \u003ci\u003eAmina’s Voice\u003c\/i\u003e and Gita Varadarajan and Sarah Weeks’s \u003ci\u003eSave Me a Seat\u003c\/i\u003e.”—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003eSchool Library Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eVarsha Bajaj (varshabajaj.com) also wrote the picture books \u003ci\u003eThe Home Builders\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThis Is Our Baby, Born Today\u003c\/i\u003e (a Bank Street Best Book). She grew up in Mumbai, India, and when she came to the United States to obtain her master's degree, her adjustment to the country was aided by her awareness of the culture through books. In addition to her previous pictur books, she wrote the middle-grade novel \u003ci\u003eAbby Spencer Goes to Bollywood\u003c\/i\u003e, which was shortlisted for the Cybils Award and included on the Spirit of Texas Reading Program. She lives in Houston, Texas.\u003cb\u003eChapter 1: Karina\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Chris Daniels and I are like separate planets orbiting in the same galaxy.\u003cbr\u003e     Like the planets, we have our own paths, and I like it that way. Mine is full of photos and stories, and his is full of basketball and hyenas.\u003cbr\u003e      Like Venus and Earth, we are next-door neighbors. We’ve been in the same school since I moved to the neighborhood in third grade, but we’ve been in the same class only once—in fifth grade.\u003cbr\u003e      Then, of all the crappy karma, there he is, on the first day of seventh grade, in five out of my seven classes at Spring Hill Middle School.\u003cbr\u003e      How did this happen—and why?\u003cbr\u003e      I must’ve had some good karma too, because Ms. Trotter is my homeroom and social studies teacher. She is the best. She greets me with a fist bump. For real.\u003cbr\u003e      Ms. Trotter is flawed, though. She believes in assigned seating. Seeing Chris sitting at the desk on my left in homeroom makes it impossible to focus. Our paths are getting dangerously close.\u003cbr\u003e      It makes me remember stuff from a year ago that I’d buried away, like those jeans with patchwork flowers in the depths of my closet.\u003cbr\u003e      Being neighbors, Chris and I have waited at the same bus stop every morning for years. He always carries some type of ball: basketball, football, or baseball. The boys play an impromptu game, as if they can’t waste even those few minutes before the bus rumbles in. I typically have my nose in a book, because I have a genetic flaw that does not allow me to catch, throw, or whack a round object. Also, I don’t want to be laughed at. When a girl named Emily played with the boys and flubbed a catch, they laughed all the way to school and back—for days.\u003cbr\u003e      It feels like survival of the most athletic on our suburban Houston streets.\u003cbr\u003e      And Chris was a witness to one of the worst moments in my middle-school life . . .\u003cbr\u003e ***\u003cbr\u003e It was in sixth grade, early in the school year. It was still ninety-eight degrees, because apparently the weather gods had not flipped the calendar from summer to fall yet.\u003cbr\u003e      Every ride home on the bus was a sauna, and it brought out the worst in the boys, who for some reason had turned into a pack of cackling hyenas that year.\u003cbr\u003e      While the rest of us fanned ourselves with notebooks or sighed in submission to the heat, they started making lists, and they were not harmless to-do lists.\u003cbr\u003e      The prettiest girls.\u003cbr\u003e      The bossiest girls.\u003cbr\u003e      The girls with the best hair. (My best friend, Ashley, made that list.)\u003cbr\u003e      The girls with the worst hair.\u003cbr\u003e      Your basic degrading grading system for girl human beings. Then Quinn, or Hyena 1, said, “Let’s make a list of the girls with the hairiest arms.”\u003cbr\u003e      Because why not, right?\u003cbr\u003e      Instinctively, I pulled at my short sleeves. I didn’t have a sweater or cover-up, because: ninety-eight degrees.\u003cbr\u003e      Together, the hyenas said, “K Chops!”\u003cbr\u003e      Yuck! Yuck! Yuckity yuck!\u003cbr\u003e      Yes, I, Karina Chopra, was at the top of the list. The only one on the list. The boys thought it was so hilarious that they couldn’t stop laughing long enough to name anyone else.\u003cbr\u003e      I glanced around through lowered lids. Some of the kids nearby pretended they had not heard, but I knew they had, because they weren’t wearing earplugs, and none of them had a hearing problem.\u003cbr\u003e      Others were laughing.\u003cbr\u003e      For the briefest moment in time, like a nanosecond, I caught Chris Daniels’s eye. He wiped off his grin the moment our eyes met, then looked away, because he had been seen.\u003cbr\u003e      Back then, I envied girls who had older brothers or sisters to protect them from bullies. Before the hairy-arms incident, I imagined that my neighbor Chris, who had grown taller and bigger, would one day be my friend and stand up for me. His older brother, Matt, was always friendly to me, but he had gone off to college a few years back.\u003cbr\u003e      After I saw Chris being a jerk with his friends, I realized he was not Superman. And I didn’t need rescuing, anyway.\u003cbr\u003e      The rest of the way home, I was mad at myself for caring. Ashley, who usually sat with me on the bus, was home sick that day. If she had been there, she would have glared at the hyenas and said, “Karina, they’re fools.” But in a way, I was just as glad she missed it all. Who needs a witness to humiliation?\u003cbr\u003e      From that day forward, I wore a lot of long-sleeved shirts to cover up my arms, even in the heat of Houston, Texas.\u003cbr\u003e      At first, Mom didn’t notice. She and Dad were busy building their sandwich franchise. Mom had quit her nine-to-five job at an oil company a year before. Dad still had his day job as a computer systems analyst, which meant he was working twenty-five out of twenty-four hours.\u003cbr\u003e      Finally, one day Mom looked at me and said, “Karina, what happened to all the cute shirts that we bought for back-to-school?”\u003cbr\u003e      She had caught me off guard, so I blurted out the truth. “They all have short sleeves, and I need to cover up my ugly arms.”\u003cbr\u003e      Mom and Dad exchanged one of their looks. “Oh, Karina,” Mom said. “Boys can be awful. Don’t let them get to you. Your arms are not ugly.”\u003cbr\u003e      But a mother has to say that, right?\u003cbr\u003e      Around that same time, I was passed a note. It had my name on it in big, bold letters—\u003cb\u003eKARINA\u003c\/b\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e      I turned to see who had written to me, but everybody had their heads down.\u003cbr\u003e      I opened the note. The same bold letters spelled \u003cb\u003eCURRY CHOPS STINKS. GO HOME.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      When I looked back again, Hyena 1, otherwise named Quinn, was giggling.\u003cbr\u003e      I read the note again. This time, I took a deep breath to calm myself.\u003cbr\u003e      I didn’t live under a rock. I knew that since 9\/11, when the Twin Towers tumbled and terror came to our shores, people have looked at brown skin with suspicion. I wasn’t even born then, but the stories were whispered in South Asian immigrant homes for years after. Usually, the adults tried to shield us kids. Even so, the fear seeped through closed doors and ventilation ducts.\u003cbr\u003e      Be careful, they said. Be careful.\u003cbr\u003e      When I was seven or eight, my older cousin told me about the Sikh American man who got shot in Arizona after the 9\/11 attacks, probably because he was wearing a turban—and that alone made the murderer think, Foreigner, terrorist. My cousin had been telling us ghost stories. Somehow, she ended up telling us a real story that was even scarier.\u003cbr\u003e      I was thankful that my father and grandfather did not wear turbans, and I worried for my friends whose fathers and grandfathers did.\u003cbr\u003e      My parents calmed my fears; they believed in America and said we were still safe. I trusted them, because I wanted to.\u003cbr\u003e      It could never happen to me, I told myself. And why would it happen to me? I was like my friends and peers.\u003cbr\u003e      I reread the note: \u003cb\u003eCURRY CHOPS STINKS. GO HOME.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      Was I different from my friends and peers?\u003cbr\u003e      I knew I didn’t stink. The note was Quinn’s way of saying he thought I was un-American, even though I was born in Texas and so were my parents.\u003cbr\u003e      I remember crumpling the note very deliberately and tossing it into the trash when the teacher wasn’t looking. And for once, despite my shaky hands, it fell into the basket in one determined arc, because that was where it belonged and the universe knew that. I noticed Chris Daniels watching me make that throw.\u003cbr\u003e      When I told my dad about the note, he let out a swear word, and I could see how upset he was. “Ignore the haters, Karina,” he told me. “Keep your head down and work. My father always said that the best revenge is success. And remember, this is your country as much as it is Quinn’s.”\u003cbr\u003e ***\u003cbr\u003e Ms. Trotter asks me a question and brings me to back to class. She looks confused when I have no answer. She does not realize that I have not heard a word she said.\u003cbr\u003e      Chris and I don’t speak to each other the rest of that first day of seventh grade. Nor do we on the bus ride home.\u003cbr\u003e      Today, I’d let myself be distracted by Chris Daniels.\u003cbr\u003e      But tomorrow will be different. I am determined to have a good year and to do well, especially in math. Two things are definitely going to help me with that. My grandfather is moving in with us, and he is a math whiz—I will have my own personal tutor at home.\u003cbr\u003e      Papa coming to live with us is also great because it means I won’t have to go to the sandwich store after school. I’ll get a break from slicing cucumbers and tomatoes, and I’ll have more time for my photography.\u003cbr\u003e      In the evening, I borrow Dad’s Canon and stroll around the neighborhood, taking pictures. I need to submit my best photograph for an art gallery competition, later this fall, and I’m still shooting.\u003cbr\u003e      I can already see my photograph hanging on the gallery’s perfect walls, bathed by a spotlight. I can hear the applause. I can smell the wine and cheese. Will they have sparkling cider for the underage exhibitors?\u003cbr\u003e      Yes, it is going to be a very good year.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChapter 2: Chris\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Awkward.\u003cbr\u003e      Karina Chopra is in five out of my seven classes this year.\u003cbr\u003e She and I haven’t exchanged a word in like a year or something. Daniels, I tell myself, she thinks you’re one of the mean dudes. I hate that.\u003cbr\u003e      Ms. Trotter is all over her. “It’s so good to have you in my class,” she tells Karina, beaming.\u003cbr\u003e      Karina is all smiles. Like nobody has told that girl the basic rule of social survival. Be cool when an adult, especially a teacher, gushes over you. Instead, Karina is all giggly, and then they fist-bump. Like they’re besties!\u003cbr\u003e      But Karina doesn’t seem to care what people think. She’s got her nose in a book at the bus stop every morning. And every couple of days, she has a new book.\u003cbr\u003e      I’d like to say something to her, to be able to tease her in a good way, but the memory of stuff that happened at the beginning of middle school stops me.\u003cbr\u003e ***\u003cbr\u003e That day, on the bus, the guys started making lists. Dumb lists. The prettiest girls, the bossiest, etc. Those lists are not my thing. I never say much when the guys do stuff I don’t think is funny.\u003cbr\u003e      Then Quinn had the bright idea of making a list of the girls with the hairiest arms.\u003cbr\u003e      I groaned. Nothing good would come out of this, I knew.\u003cbr\u003e      “K Chops is the queen of hairy arms,” he declared, and then he yukked it up as if it was the funniest thing ever.\u003cbr\u003e      I looked across the aisle right when Karina was looking my way. She gave me a look that said, I feel sorry for you. After that, she kept a poker face, opened her backpack, took out her book, and read the whole way home.\u003cbr\u003e      I wish I had said something. If only I knew Karina better and could explain things. I wish I had told her that with her brown eyes and big smile, she should have been on the list of prettiest girls.\u003cbr\u003e That evening, I called my brother, Matt, who was away at college.\u003cbr\u003e      I told him about how cool it was to be on the basketball team and how I’d scored. And then I told him about the bus and Karina, because it had bothered me all day and Matt is the best listener in the whole world.\u003cbr\u003e      Matt groaned. “That’s ugly, dude.”\u003cbr\u003e      I could also count on him to understand. \u003ci\u003eUgly\u003c\/i\u003e was correct.\u003cbr\u003e      “What’d you do?” he asked.\u003cbr\u003e      What could I have done? I had asked myself that question. I was sitting on the bus with the guys from the basketball team, and I had only waited forever to be able to sit with them—to be one of the guys. If I had said something at the time, what price would I have had to pay?\u003cbr\u003e      The middle-school bus is a monster that no one has slayed, as far as I know. Being quiet—biting your tongue, swallowing your thoughts and words—is how you survive. So far, those tactics have worked for me.\u003cbr\u003e      “Doing the right thing is hard,” he said when I was silent. “But, Chris, at least you know what is right and wrong.”\u003cbr\u003e      I did know the difference, but was that enough? Did I need a new game plan?\u003cbr\u003e      “I’ll be home in a few weeks, Chris. Hang in there, okay? We’ll shoot hoops together and talk.”\u003cbr\u003e Since that day, Karina hasn’t talked to me.\u003cbr\u003e      To make things even worse, around that same time, Quinn passed Karina a nasty note. I remember watching her face crumple when she opened it. Then she tossed it in the trash when Mrs. Clay wasn’t looking.\u003cbr\u003e      All through that class, I kept thinking about the note. What could Quinn have said? There was no way for me to concentrate on word problems with fractions. At the end of the class, after everyone left, I dug through the garbage and found the tightly balled note. I smoothed the paper and read it.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e     CURRY CHOPS STINKS. GO HOME.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      At first, I didn’t even understand it. Quinn wanted Karina to go home in the middle of the day? Why did he call her Curry? And she didn’t stink.\u003cbr\u003e      Then it sunk in how he was insulting her.\u003cbr\u003e I called good old Matt again. What would I do without him? I felt bad for anyone who didn’t have Matt as a big brother. When I told him what happened, Matt was silent for the longest time.\u003cbr\u003e      “You there?” I asked.\u003cbr\u003e      “Quinn is a small-minded squirt,” he said.\u003cbr\u003e The next day, I was already feeling pretty angry toward Quinn when we were put on opposing teams during a basketball game in PE. Each time Quinn ran toward the basket to score, I was a defensive wall and he couldn’t score at all. He got angry and crashed into me, making me fall.\u003cbr\u003e      “Trash play,” I yelled at him. “What’s your problem anyway, dude?”\u003cbr\u003e      Quinn gave me a funny look, but I didn’t care. I was mad—about a lot of things.\u003cbr\u003e      Why was it so hard to do the right thing?\u003cbr\u003e ***\u003cbr\u003e Now, on the first day of seventh grade, I remember that moment. I wish that Karina had been there at that basketball game when I told Quinn off. Too bad girls have separate PE. Could I maybe reach across the aisle and tell her that? A year after the fact? Nah! She’d think I’d lost my marbles.","brand":"Nancy Paulsen Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304721699045,"sku":"NP9780525517245","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780525517245.jpg?v=1767724163","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/count-me-in-isbn-9780525517245","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}